Jane Steele

by Lyndsay Faye

  “I found the mortuary,” I owned. “I’ve no aversion.”

  Provided I have ample warning every time Sam Quillfeather pays a call.

  “Oh, marvellous—we feared distressing you, and if you don’t mind failing to mention it to Sahjara, we are unsure how she’ll take it. When she is older …”

  “Of course.”

  “And nothing else occurred? Mr. Thornfield is not himself today.”

  “Is he all right?” I felt stricken—if he were morose, I was culpable. The next instant I felt glad—if he were affected, hope was not lost.

  “Yes,” Mr. Singh replied, but the word was too lengthy for one syllable.

  “He told me about the, um. The penance. The gloves.”

  “Ah.” A frown formed beneath his nobly hooked nose. “Did he elaborate upon why he abstains?”

  I shook my head.

  “The Guru contains passages about abnegation—fasting, meditation, the renunciation of wealth, but in my opinion, Miss Stone …” He lowered his voice. “Such a profound sacrifice is not required by God. The pair of us made a mistake long ago which led us into terrible circumstances, but Charles—I beg your pardon, Mr. Thornfield—”

  “It’s all right. I know you’re not the butler.”

  “Do you?” he exclaimed.

  “I imagine you’re a sight better as a commander,” I teased.

  “Well.” He made a small bow, after which his eyes crinkled in distress once more. “Charles, then, feels so culpable that he denies himself touch as a form of self-mortification. I have not yet directly attempted to prevent him, thinking he needed time more than any other balm—but his heart is wide, and bleeds from many hidden wounds.”

  “So often the way, with hearts.”

  Brushing a hand over his beard, Mr. Singh passed me, inscrutable, heading towards the front door. I remembered Mrs. Garima Kaur’s early assertion to me that he was good, and was grateful, for I knew no one else in whom I could confide.

  “I am for the village to settle our bill with the mortuary workmen. Miss Stone, know that I do not take discussion of Charles’s heart lightly, and forgive me if I’ve overburdened you.”

  “You haven’t. He has mine, you know.”

  Mr. Sardar Singh lingered even as his hand pulled the ornate brass handle of the door. I could not read his face well in any light, so obscured was it by his beard, but now he was quite masked by the cold glow beyond.

  “Yes, I thought he might,” he admitted. “I will charge him to guard it, Miss Stone. On my honour.”

  “The Sikh people seem to me very honourable indeed.”

  Though wintry gusts pelted us, Mr. Singh paused again, and a look steely as his chakkar sharpened his features. Since my initial conversation with Garima Kaur over his character, he had never frightened me; now, however, a chill shot down my spine which had nothing to do with the freezing draught.

  “There you are mistaken. Which is worse, Miss Stone, if you will pardon my crudeness—a rapist or a pimp?”

  “I … I can hardly answer that.” Crescendos of arctic air whirled into the house. “I should abhor either one.”

  “Consider the East India Company the rapists, Miss Stone, and the Sikh ruling class the pimps supplying them.” He pulled his collar up. “Forgive me … you’ve no desire for a history lesson. Keep yourself well. Charles and I will not return until tomorrow—he met Inspector Quillfeather at his home some miles distant to raise a glass to the mortuary’s completion, and we both plan to pass the night there. Thank you for being so free with yourself, as you have given me much to consider.”

  The door closed, and I watched as the snowflakes turned into teardrops upon the floorboards. Something about this exchange nagged at me—something which I did not understand but felt like awakening in a lightless room with the fanciful certainty that one is not alone.

  Soon, I walked upstairs with the unopened letter; it seemed a breathing creature in my hands, and in a way I have always thought that words are alive a little, for they can whisper sweet nothings and roar dragon flame with equal efficiency. After all that had taken place the previous night, I could not even imagine what I wanted it to say, and when I had closed the door to my room, I placed it on the table and stalked about it in circles as if contemplating a chained beast. If I learnt I was not the true mistress of Highgate House, would I prove so spineless as to simply accept Mr. Thornfield’s scruples and live as his lovesick shadow for the rest of my days? If learnt that I was the rightful heir, would I prove so horribly low as to use my power for leverage against his wishes? Both outcomes made me ill; one or the other must inevitably be contained in the envelope, scratching to escape with malicious claws.

  At length, I simply hid the volatile missive in my bedchamber; I did not want it now, could not even look at it calmly, but I could not read my future in my teacup either. The remainder of the day was uneventful, closed by a hesitant spill of Scotch I poured for myself in the spreading silence and an hour spent in my bed over a book of Irish poems.

  I ought to have been grateful for the tranquillity; tragedy would not strike upon that night, as it happened, until one o’clock in the morning.

  • • •

  There was no sound at first, merely a sense; I snapped awake, feeling him downstairs, my eyes stuffed with sleepy cotton.

  Dread crawled over my skin an instant later when an unknown object audibly shattered.

  When I remember these swift seconds, I was up almost before the china had finished splintering, knowing that Mr. Singh could never be so clumsy and that if Mr. Thornfield had staggered and fell, then he must be drunk, and it was my responsibility to see he was not hurt, for I must have been the one who hurt him; and even if what I was telling myself was nonsense I still yearned to be near him in every capacity, so I threw my dressing gown on and slipped my small knife into its pocket and flew for the ground floor.

  If it sounds foolish to race towards a clumsy housebreaker, I had ample reason; Mr. Thornfield was all I had thought of for weeks of fever dreams and halfhearted plotting, and even if we were both poorly stitched together creatures made of scar tissue and regrets, I wanted only to find a way to live in his world more fully. So I tumbled into the front hall and came face-to-face with the remains of a vase and a man unlike any I had ever previously met.

  I could not tell what race he was, for his eyes were dark and his skin burnished, side-whiskers bright red in the light of his portable lamp; his trousers boasted a loud check pattern and his secondhand coat was wine-coloured velvet. He swayed, emitting acrid whiskey clouds as he panted like the lousiest Company cur north of Calcutta, as Mr. Thornfield would have put it.

  Unfortunately, Mr. Thornfield was not present.

  “What are ye?” the ruffian snarled, sounding pleased.

  The accent was nigh-impossible to parse, but I thought it might have been the result of a Scottish lilt applied to already-musical Indian intonations.

  “The governess.”

  I considered screaming for once in my life; but Mr. Singh and Mr. Thornfield, who slept on the same floor I did, were from home, and the servants inhabited another wing. Apart from Sahjara three doors down from my bedroom, whom I prayed would not come downstairs, I was alone.

  “D’ye always keep such midnight hours?” he purred, revealing yellowed teeth.

  “Get away from here! I’ll call the master of the house.”

  He slanted a canny look at me. “And why haven’t ye already? I suspect he ain’t here to come when ye do shout.”

  Morbidity is not the same as stupidity, so I wheeled and made for the kitchen, intending to shriek my face off for whichever Singh or Kaur could hear me; but I found my throat caught in a vise, hashish-laden breath creeping across my cheekbones.

  “I meant t’ question the half-bred lass, but ye might be a sight better,” the rotting relic of foreign wars spoke in my ear. “Tell me now where the trunk is and ye can sleep sound and safe.”

  “They don’t have i
t!” I choked. “Let me go!”

  How long we wrestled in that entryway I cannot recall, though I know I landed a number of ineffective blows. I was once more a being of edges and angles, fighting viciously to preserve not only the little girl upstairs I hoped was not roused by our clamour but the woman downstairs, making it.

  “That’s the most whoreson lie I’ve heard since leaving Delhi,” his fat lips spoke against my ear.

  Howling now, though to no one in particular, I fought to free my hands; he had caught both under one burly sweat-smelling arm.

  If I could get to my knife.

  I can get to my knife.

  I will get to my knife.

  Laughing in cruel wheezes like the rasp of a hacksaw, he shoved me facedown over the arm of the sofa in the drawing room after he had dragged me there, filling my nose with sweat and leather and lust, and I knew what happened next, had already faced the prospect. His bones bruised my wrists where they were pinioned, his other hand clumsily jostling at my skirts as he raised them.

  “D’ye squeal like cows hereabouts, or just eat ’em?” he asked, rancid teeth brushing my neck.

  I heard the approach of measured footsteps on the drive, and the front door opening.

  Reader: I screamed, and if I could have screamed loud enough, I would have pierced him clean through.

  “Damn ye straight t’ hell,” he growled.

  A scorching pain blazed through my head as my assailant seized me by the follicles and led me into the shadows of the large chamber; the noises from the hall ceased.

  “I’ll see the whole lot o’ ye vipers in hell,” my captor hissed.

  He pressed pocket-warm metal against my gullet, and I had no choice save to follow as he dragged me by the scalp. When Mr. Thornfield and Mr. Singh burst into the room, I yet supposed the weapon a dull knife, but after the brute brandished the thing, I saw that it was a pistol in his hand.

  Upon glimpsing my assailant, both men’s faces distorted as if a sword had met their bellies.

  “How is it possible you’re yet alive?” Mr. Thornfield cried, unsheathing the blade he carried.

  “Oh, aye, always so shocked when the rent comes due,” crooned the man holding me hostage. “Give me the small one who knows where the bounty is buried—or else the trunk, better still—and we’ll argue nae further.”

  “We don’t have it,” Mr. Singh protested urgently. “And Miss Stone knows nothing of your monstrous intrigues. Let her loose or—”

  “Or what?”

  “They aren’t lying to you,” I croaked, still feeling the phantom clench of a fist round my throat.

  “It’s nae in the Punjab.” He rubbed against my cheek, boar’s bristles abrading me. “It’s nae in jolly old London town. And ye claim it’s nae here, but mayhaps a bullet will jog someone’s faculties.”

  “No!” Mr. Thornfield cried.

  “Oh, d’ye prefer this aimed at you, then?”

  The scorching grip against my hair blazed into a bonfire even as the badmash removed his gun from my neck and swung it in the direction of Charles Thornfield.

  Mr. Singh, whose movements were generally so calculated you could have set your watch by them, lifted a futile palm in horrified protest; the master of the house looked endearingly relieved, as if having a pistol aimed at his forehead was preferable to its being aimed at mine. My immediate circumstances branded themselves upon my memory—the setting half-moon, the distant scuffles as the servants were roused, the fact Mr. Thornfield was gazing into my eyes rather than the barrel of the weapon now levelled at him. The sheer horror of the scene nearly finished me.

  It did not, however—because the blackguard now had one arm devoted to a gun cocked at Mr. Thornfield and the other to tearing my scalp from its moorings; so I whipped out my knife and stabbed blindly backwards with all the fervour men devote to war.

  • • •

  I do not know whether the casual reader of novels is acquainted with an anatomical curiosity known as the femoral artery; without too much medical meandering, although you might suppose that cutting a man’s throat would be the fastest way to slaughter him, a good jab to the thigh will do.

  Fainting in front of Mr. Thornfield and Mr. Singh was never my object, but faint indeed I did for the second time in my life. Not due to fright—pain swept me under its carpet. It must have been a brief respite, however, for when I came to, I was tucked deep in the settee with a blanket covering me, and Mr. Thornfield was shouting for towels, hovering over the pitifully whimpering brute. Mrs. Garima Kaur was there, looking haggard, twisting her fingers in violent worriment before running to obey the master of the house.

  Walls tilted and furniture swam, and perhaps ten minutes later Mr. Thornfield was not shouting for anything anymore, merely gazing with dark satisfaction at what seemed a corpse and a crimson pond upon our floorboards.

  The fact of my fifth murder at first slid off my consciousness like water from a goose feather; but I knew instinctually I could not remain in the same room with the dead man lazing in the pool of blood. Wrenching myself upright, I attempted a graceful exit.

  “Wait a moment, Jane!” Mr. Thornfield cried.

  “I can’t stay here.”

  “You’re reeling from hurt and shock, you’ll injure—”

  “Don’t touch me!”

  We stared at each other, I in astonishment I had rebuffed him and he in chagrin he had startled me so. His thin grey gloves were covered with the other man’s gore, his shirt and waistcoat too, for he had been practicing his profession automatically, I believe, tending to the injured in spite of everything, and I was ready to splinter into a thousand mirror shards reflecting every memory of my own ugliness. Mr. Singh arrived bearing a mop and a bucket of soapy water and stopped, taking measure of the situation.

  “Charles.” He passed his friend the cleaning supplies. “Miss Stone, will you let me walk beside you to the morning room?”

  I started to speak, but clutched at his elbow rather than continue.

  Mr. Singh ducked his cloth-bound head against my throbbing scalp in a glancing touch; Mr. Thornfield spread his arms as if in supplication, but since I could not speak, neither to protest the tainted innocence of accident nor beg forgiveness for guilt, I walked away. Mr. Singh accompanied me and, when we were in the morning room, I crossed to the divan and collapsed.

  I could not see the shadow which tangled with mine as Sardar Singh hovered over me; I smelt him, though, warm nutmeg and the clean wintry sweat which accompanies a trek on horseback in January, and I fought not to weep at the strange comfort of it.

  “Miss Stone, I am no doctor, but Charles will be here shortly, and in the meanwhile you’ve nothing whatsoever to fear. Are you injured in any sense we’re not aware of?”

  “No.”

  “Thank God for that, then,” he said as his footfalls grew fainter. “And thank God we were early in returning—we should have been here around midday tomorrow had we not been loath to leave the property unprotected.”

  He knelt on the carpet before me with a glass of brandy when he returned; I swallowed it, and the searing of my bruised throat brought me back to myself. When I could focus, I saw that Mr. Singh regarded me as he might a casualty of a war he had started, and I did not think I could bear that expression.

  “All this will pass,” said I, unsteadily.

  “I am glad you think so.”

  I wanted to elaborate—in this impossible future, I would not have just murdered yet another man, Sahjara would break mighty stallions, Mr. Thornfield would love me, and everyone would lose the look we had of folk waiting for the axe to fall.

  “I think about many things that aren’t true, even say them sometimes,” I confessed instead, and his mouth tugged fathoms deep.

  “Miss Stone, there is nothing I can do to relieve your pain over what just occurred. But I had a sister once, and in a way—in a very English way,” he amended, “you remind me of her. I don’t think that anyone who reminds me of my sister ou
ght to feel so melancholy about herself, though I understand you must be in a state of extreme distress.”

  You really cannot imagine what sort of state I am in.

  “Did I kill him?”

  “Yes,” said he.

  I bit my lip, that sharp hurt dulling the ache in my chest. “Was your sister beautiful?”

  Mr. Singh smiled. I have visited many churchyards, both as inspiration for gallows ballads and for perverse pleasure, and it was the smile I had found on the carved angels’ faces—peaceful but eroding.

  “Indeed she was. Her name was Karman, and do you know, that sealed her fate, I think.”

  “What does it mean?”

  “‘Doer of deeds.’ Charles will never tell you this, but I was always a pacifist at heart. Oh, I am a skilled warrior, as is our honour and the will of God. But ‘Let compassion be your mosque,’ the Guru states, and if you were to discuss compassion with a Khalsa naik* today …” He shrugged.

  I tucked my arm under my pulsating head. “But your sister was a fighter?”

  “The great Maharajah Ranjit Singh would have been hard-pressed to win a battle with my sister,” Mr. Singh reflected. “Karman, from the time she was small, was wildly passionate. She loved the Khalsa in the new ways, with sharp swords and fat jewels and daring feats, whilst I loved it in the old ways, with meditation and acceptance. ‘Whom should I despise, since the one Lord made us all?’ If you were to have asked Karman, she would have spat, ‘The British and the Bengali strumpets who service them.’ Then she would have laughed and shouted, ‘Khalsa-ji!’ and you may have thought it merriment, but there was war in her eyes from the age of five, and later, men adored her for it. I did not blame them. I loved her before they did, after all.”

  “You were a good brother to her.”

  “Oh, yes,” he scoffed. “I taught her to fight with the tulwar, the chakkar, just as I did Charles, when I ought to have taught her meditation.”

  “Did it grieve you, that you were so different?”

  “A little—but people cannot help being who they are.”